


show me your humanity (amid the storm)

by Andromicat



Category: Purple Hyacinth - Ephemerys & Sophism (Webcomic)
Genre: Accidental Confession, Again, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I swear to God, Italics overuse, No Fluff, Not a bad ending, RIP, SIMP!Kieran, and the depresso ending, anyway, arbitrary circumstances that will never happen, dramatic af, em dash overuse, excessive symbolism, have fun, hc, how did i even get this idea, i guess you’ll have to read to find out, minor 43 mirroring, minorly simp kieran, poured in a lil too much angst, sans the chokey choke, serious redundancy issues, simp kieran, some more positive tags, this is a problem, wait are these the only positive tags, whoops, why
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25598794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andromicat/pseuds/Andromicat
Summary: “You.” Her voice has gone flat. Dull. It is emotionless and emotional at once, reeling shock and numbing pain. Her grip loosens, and she falls back, regarding him slowly, with searching eyes and trembling hands. Behind the aureate pools of her eyes, the cogs of her mind slow to a grinding turn, slowly, slowly, slowly—Kieran watches her, eyes darting from her feet to her hands to her gaze, steeling himself—But then she throws her head back andlaughs.(During an altercation with his partner in crime, Kieran lets a little confession slip.)
Relationships: Lauren Sinclair & Kieran White, Lauren Sinclair/Kieran White
Comments: 24
Kudos: 148





	show me your humanity (amid the storm)

**Author's Note:**

> T-this fic—  
> I don’t even know how it came to be. I just started writing and was liek “huh what if 43 happened again down the line but with a better ending because lauki isn’t the weird sorta-accidentally-close-but-also-not they were back then but rather two clueless idiots with a massive crush”. Or something. I don’t even know, it’s pretty random asf to me as well, tbh. It literally has no relevance to the—  
> Eh. What’s done is done, I’ll just go with it, I guess. Even if it makes no sense. LOL.  
> This went through an unnecessary amount of editing sessions because I kept wanting to yeet the tone of the story. I may or may not have a seriously toxic and obsessive love-hate relationship with editing. _oh lord someone stop me i need to adopt the no beta mindset before i implode_  
>  (off topic but my keyboard was on pinyin keyboard while i was writing this a/n AND IT KEPT SWITCHING TO CHINESE EVERY TIME I PRESSED SHIFT but i was too lazy to switch back to the english keyboard lmao)  
> Moving on. There is heavy-handed angst but also some h/c ahead. It doesn’t end badly. At least, probably not. ;)
> 
> Thanks to my (also long-suffering) beta [GingerBeer42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerBeer42/)! SHUT UP YOU’RE HELPFUL ASF. And an additional thanks to [thechocolatelife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thechocolatelife/) and [UndeadSoulSnatcher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UndeadSoulSnatcher/) for providing much-needed additional feedback on this arbitrary and random af dumpster fire!
> 
> _have fun i guess_

The waterfall rumbles like a stirring beast.

Kieran leans back in his chair, folding his hands, his face cloaked in a placid, false calm. A shred of him— _perhaps it is his conscience—_ screams and sobs for him to end this facade, but his heart is deaf to its calls, only hearing the keening lament of his fate. He awaits it: the voice that whispers of violent ends and a shattering heart amid a whirl of destruction. He welcomes it with open arms. 

He deserves it, anyway.

Death has always been at arm’s reach for him, as he is the final messenger for so many souls, the harbinger of so much mortality. Yet again last night, he’d been the very artist of death, painting every dying breath with a brilliant streak of red, trailing the graceful arc of his sword. The blood stains his hands, dries like paint, layer after layer of crimson regret, but he moves on, numb, unfazed. He drifts on, blind to the sea of scarlet in his wake, deaf to the cries of the souls he has reaped.

He’s done it again, something terrible, absolutely unforgivable. Lune had returned, so the Leader had told him to retaliate, to send a warning. And so he had—the deaths of so many by his own blade, a horrifying, bloody reprise that has played several thousand too many times. 

So when his judgment descends on him with her broken wings and fiery gaze, he expects nothing but animosity. Icy disappointment and burning hatred. Hatred that he so richly deserves from the very depths of his broken soul.

It’s almost as if he’s back there again, almost the same as it was now— _there is a cave and pouring rain and the terrifying white mask of her face when she bursts through the sheets of rain. There is screaming, there is accusation whirling razor-sharp in the air between them, and there is his splintering resolve, and there is—_

_MONSTER._

He shakes his head before he tumbles back down that abyss, before the rage and desperation and guilt snap him up and swallow him whole in their hungry jaws. No. That is in the past, and he will never let it happen again. _Never._

He will not let himself lose control again, not to _her,_ the woman whose blazing eyes and drifting smile graces his days, haunts his nights. In ten years, Lauren is the only one who really knows anything about him, the only one he has truly let in. The only one he has ever dared to trust, dared to care for, and— 

With every passing day, the warmth _for her_ that blooms in his chest flickers a little brighter. Something pulls him to her, regardless of the fire and ice of her hatred (but it has changed now, and they are closer. Deeper. Or they _were_ before he went and broke it all again). She’d always been beautiful, and he’d always known, but now something beyond that attraction has taken root, plaguing his days and his nights. A deep trust, a bond, and something beyond that—dare he say it? 

The feeblest flickers of something warm, something bright. 

Something like love.

He never truly thought it possible that a monster like him could feel such emotion. He doesn’t _deserve_ to feel love, surely doesn’t deserve to receive it. Not with the blood he has spilled, staining his hands with the weight of so many souls. But selfish as he is, he clutches it to his chest and holds on with all his feeble strength.

At least he managed to cherish that warmth for a fleeting moment. Even if that moment has long taken flight, gliding into the past on swift, fluttering wings. With what he has done, there is no return from. No excuse for. They are broken, fractured, again, and the giver of his warmth is already slipping away. With every second that flits by, the gentle warmth of her smile fades a little more. 

He should’ve known by now that all good must end, especially when he is who he is: the Purple Hyacinth. The deadliest assassin Ardhalis has ever known. A monster with no humanity left in his blackened soul.

Every time he wanders a civilian’s path, assumes a mask of innocence, his facade lingers a moment too long, and he lets himself idle in that falsehood a second more than he should’ve. Every time, they believe in the lies until _he_ believes them too, and then for the faintest instant, he is no longer the Hyacinth. He is just another common man in a dull office working a dull, mindless job, slowly but surely falling for—

And then the blood and death and _screams_ flood into his mind unbidden, and the guilt and numbness grasp onto his heart like a wretched claw, and Kieran’s little rush of freedom ends. These dreams of his fracture before his very eyes. The Purple Hyacinth is not a man, and he never will be. He is heartless, the worst of his kind, unforgivable; nothing he heals will _ever_ repent for all he has destroyed. How foolish is he to believe in such lies? How _desperate_? 

He has no future. Deserves no love.

This is how it ends, and how it always will end.

~~~

She arrives like a wraith through the mist, a whirl of white and red and the gleam of her gilded gaze. His judgment is here on fleeting steps and fiery fury, and all for an inevitable end— 

“Kieran,” She is dangerously quiet, a flaking sheet of glacial calm over a searing fire. Her fury is beautiful, really, her auburn hair framing her face like fire given shape, the glare of her eyes harder than diamond, brighter than gold. “ _Why_. _This. Again?_ ”

Bitterly, his act parades on. “What again?” He tries to laugh, but the sound is too dry, too hollow to sound anywhere near genuine. He cannot let her see how broken he is inside. There’s too much darkness, too many splintered pieces of him scattered everywhere like shattered glass, digging into his psyche like an army of piercing needles.

“You _know_ what! Those _deaths_! _You killed so many last night, Kieran,_ ” she hisses, and it’s almost like they’re in that storm again, in a whirling blaze of accusation and fury— _but no, it won’t happen this time, he’ll let himself burn at her mercy._ Because he deserves it. He so, so richly deserves it. “Do you—do you even feel a _shred_ of regret? When so many have died because of _you?_ ”

Lauren pauses for a moment, her eyes flickering. A shadow drapes over her face, and from somewhere in the darkness emerges a shred of regret. Guilt. Sorrow. Lune caused this slaughter, just as they did last time. And as much as she wishes she could deny it, she knows the cost of what they’ve done. “ _Because of us._ ”

He doesn’t respond. He cannot respond, for fear of letting himself break again, letting the dam fracture and the water burst forth in an uninhibited flood. But, curiously, he feels no such fractures. Deep under the surface, there is only drowning regret and the steady beat of trepidation. There is no tremor if the beast has been tamed.

She looks up at him. He looks away.

“You _bastard_ ,” she whispers, and she’s up in his face, nose to nose, razor golden to hollow turquoise, her iron grip enclosing his arm. She is close, _too_ close, the heat of her breath inches from his lips. Cold rage and sorrow pours from her voice. It overflows and drowns them both in its suffocating surge, and yet he finds that all he can see are her eyes. He is trapped in them like a fly in a drop of amber, slowly drowning in their depths. “ _You—you—_ ”

_Say something, say something, say something. Say you’re sorry. You are, right?_

“Lauren. _Lauren._ ” She startles, looks up at the whisper of her name, but her grip does not slacken. Her mistrustful glare pierces through his skull as if his armor is nothing. She’d always had that effect on him. How easily she breaks his walls, _affects_ him—it scares him.

“I’m so sorry,” he finally croaks out, although he knows his cries will never reach her, only echo, echo, echo into the void between them, _sorry, sorry, sorry._ They echo and they break, and she only watches, unhearing, unmoving, as he shatters before her. “I had to. You know I had no other choice.”

_Because if I did, I would’ve done anything for you. Anything so you wouldn’t be hurt, so you wouldn’t feel that guilt again. I’d do anything to make you happy, to see that smile bloom on your face—_

_Because I—_

It’s only when her grip tightens that he realizes his lips are moving, and he looks up and sees the shock slowly gathering on her porcelain face, the faintest tint of rose blooming on her cheeks. 

_Oh, I said it out loud, didn’t I._ Fuck.

_And she heard it all. She can tell. She knows I’m not lying._

“You.” Her voice has gone flat. Dull. It is emotionless and emotional at once, reeling shock and numbing pain. Her grip loosens, and she falls back, regarding him slowly, with searching eyes and trembling hands. Behind the aureate pools of her eyes, the cogs of her mind slow to a grinding turn, slowly, slowly, slowly—

Kieran watches her, eyes darting from her feet to her hands to her gaze, steeling himself— 

But then she throws her head back and _laughs_. 

“I’m so _stupid_ ,” she gasps. For a moment, her eyes harbor the crazed gleam of a madwoman, lost somewhere so far that none can ever retrieve her. She lifts a hand to her face, her gaze unfocused, staring at him and yet straight through him. “All this time you—and I just—”

She halts, drops her arm, steadying herself in the whirling storm of her mind. A thousand questions spiral in her eyes, but she asks none. There is so much, _too_ much, to say. And there is too much for him to ever say, ever answer.

“What a turn of events,” Lauren’s voice lilts strangely, mockingly, almost mechanical. She releases his arm, falling back. Her clouded gaze slowly clears, and she watches him silently, expectantly.

“I—” he starts, but his words catch in his throat and spill back down into the waning chasm in his chest. Suddenly, he is unable to meet her eyes again. This isn’t something he’d ever wanted her to know, let alone something he’d ever planned to defend. It’s uncomfortable, too genuine, too far from his shallow flirting and their joking banter. 

How had he— _they_ —ever come to this?

She whirls on him again, stepping closer, and yet he still avoids her gaze, unwilling to let her see the turmoil, fearful of what _he_ would see reflected in her own eyes. “You care,” she whispers, incredulous. Fragile as glass, her shaky voice sounds almost _confused._ “ _Why?_ ”

“I—I don’t know,” he stammers, and he closes his eyes, steeling himself. Within his trembling grasp, he searches out the truth from deep inside, gripping onto it before it falls again. Decisively, he stares her in the eyes, letting her _see_ him, the emotion flowing between them uninhibited. “I realized one day—that you _mattered_ to me.” _That I’d trust my life with you. That I’d do_ anything _for you, just so I could see you smile again._

Momentarily, she stares, a shadow of shock darting across her lovely face, but it passes quickly this time. The realization reaches her like the sun rising from clouds, illuminating. What he’d said. What he felt. 

Gradually, her eyes soften, and Kieran can almost feel the soft flicker of her hearth spring to life. He is warm again, invigorated by her fleeting gaze.

“Kieran,” she whispers, and she draws closer again, hand wrapping onto his arm. Her mere touch ignites him, brings waves of fluttering warmth across his chest. God, he’s so _gone_ for this woman. “I never thought I’d say this, but… you know what? _You matter to me too._ ”

_She—_

_I—_

He stands there, mouth gaping, the stream of his words stuttering, fading from his lips. _She cares?_ Why? Never in a thousand lifetimes had he expected anyone to reciprocate even in the slightest, not to someone like him, someone unforgivable, _unlovable._

And never from _her_. Lauren, who should’ve hated him from the start, who should’ve left him and never come back. But she stayed. But somehow, she _cared._

Why is she still here, after all he’d done, after all he’d done to _her_? _Why_ did she ever give him, the Purple Hyacinth, a chance, with all the better people in the world? The horrors of his slaughter are irredeemable. He is a cold killer, heartless, a monster. The absolute worst of his kind, and yet— 

Does she see something in him that he doesn’t? 

“Lauren, I’m so sorry,” he says then, and she looks up, confused. The urge to escape her gaze reemerges, but he refuses. He glances down at her silently, and his eyes darken with the marring shadows of his sins. Her grip tightens on his arm, but her eyes are his beacon, the light he strives to reach. “No. About yesterday. The…the deaths. If I had the choice, I’d never kill again. Truly.” 

But she shakes her head. Boldly, she steps forward, resting her other hand softly on his shoulder, her gaze an infinite depth of warmth and liquid sunlight. “No, _I’m_ sorry,” she insists, her breath almost ghosting his cheek. “I shouldn’t have said those things. You aren’t like that, Kieran. I’ve seen you. I _know_ you.

“You’re not heartless, and you’re not a monster. You’re _human._ ”

_Human._

He has guarded those precious little shreds of morality close to his chest for so long, refusing to let go even as the darkness around him claws at him and swallows him whole. No, no matter what he does, he never wants to lose himself, never wants to grow numb to the slaughter. He wants the pain, the guilt, the regret. To feel the stabbing horror of death, to let the lingering guilt pervade his soul. Because _feeling_ is human. 

And after all these years, his quest for humanity is the one thing he will never relent. 

Is there hope for him, then? That somewhere, that spark remains. That even after all he’s done, he is not lost.

She never knew it, and yet in ten years, she is the only one who has found him.

“ _Thank you,_ ” he whispers.

She smiles. “Don’t mention it.”

She leans forward then, softly resting her chin on her shoulder. Her hand drifts down and wraps around his waist, and almost reflexively, he melts into her touch. She is warm, and she is grounding, and she is _human._

The sensation of her warmth so close to him is foreign, and yet it is almost second nature to reciprocate, to lean into her and snake his arms around her back. They lean into each other, and for once, he feels _safe._ In her embrace, he feels _warm._

They are a sanctuary of warmth, a gentle refuge of calm amid the storm.

Distantly, the waterfall purrs.

**Author's Note:**

> Lauren is always the _blindest of all_. LMAO. I mean, they kinda both are. Emotionally constipated much?  
> This was my first attempt with actually analyzing or characterizing Lauki—all my previous fics were a lot more general and didn’t dive quite as deep as this one did. Dear lord, this was hard to write, lol. I need to cut down on verbose and excessive symbolism. And the horrible dialogue verbose. _~~help~~_ O_o  
> Tell me how I did on the characterization, as I’m afraid of my own power of making literally anything OOC. Lauren was…kinda irrational, and I might’ve made Kieran simp a bit too hard. (I tend to do that with my 3rd person limited writing; it’s almost disturbing how everyone becomes a simp to the point that it borders on self-destruction. Sorry about that, _oop._ ) (Wait no, I’m not sorry, this is exactly what he did in Episode 50. HAH.) ~~_Simp Kieran Agenda, hahaha?_~~  
>  *sobs* if only. but if this fic is adequate, i will gladly donate it to the cause. ( ・∀・)っ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*  
> —anyway yeah comments and kudos are appreciated!!
> 
> As always, thank you to my lovely and rather unfortunate beta, [GingerBeer42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerBeer42/)! GO READ HER PH FICS THEY’RE AMAZING AND DON’T GET ENOUGH ATTENTION.  
> And here’s [Purple Hyacinth on Webtoon](https://www.webtoons.com/en/mystery/purple-hyacinth/list?title_no=1621) as well as [the official Discord (we may be chaotic, but we’re nice people, we swear)](https://discord.gg/MRyCG3).


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